Affirmative Action Foe Hits Roadblock

July 14, 2000|By MARK HOLLIS Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE — California businessman Ward Connerly's campaign against Florida's affirmative-action laws was dealt a major blow Thursday when the state Supreme Court ruled that four constitutional amendments eliminating affirmative action in government must be kept off the ballot.

In one of its most forceful rulings of the year, the state's high court said each of the so-called Florida Civil Rights Initiative petitions is drafted too broadly in scope; they would potentially affect all levels of government and would be misleading to voters.

Connerly, who championed the dismantling of racial-preference laws in California and Washington state and has made Florida the latest battleground over affirmative action, had already suspended efforts to put the issue before voters in November in hopes that it could be considered in 2002.

But Thursday's decision means that backers of Connerly's initiative will now have to either fall back from Florida or try a new strategy if they hope to derail affirmative action policies that have been in place for more than two decades.

Herb Harmon, Connerly's Florida consultant, said supporters of the petition drive, who had collected more than 240,000 signatures and had spent more than $300,000 to get the issue before the court, are "disappointed but not surprised" by Thursday's ruling.

Harmon also said Connerly and his top financial supporters in the state, primarily white-owned construction business owners, are committed to preventing state and local governments from treating people differently based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. He said they are already considering whether to sue state and local governments over affirmative action policies or submit an altogether new ballot initiative, which would require a fresh set of signatures to be collected.

At issue for the court Thursday was whether the initiatives adhere to the state Constitution's single-subject rule, intended to prevent the practice of combining unrelated issues into a single proposal to secure passage of an unpopular idea.

In a lengthy opinion, the court said the Connerly petitions represent a classic example of what the single-subject rule is aimed to curtail. Justices also raised concerns that the amendments would prevent the state Legislature and the courts from remedying past and present discriminatory practices.

"It is precisely this sort of cataclysmic change that the drafters of the single-subject rule labored to prevent," said the opinion, signed by Justices Major B. Harding, Barbara Pariente and Peggy A. Quince and supported by the four remaining justices.

The petitions, labeled as "Amendments to End Governmental Discrimination and Preferences," were circulated as four separate amendment proposals: one each dealing separately with education, employment and contracting, and a fourth proposal combining all three.

Lawyers for Connerly had hoped that dividing the issue in such a way would sufficiently address the single-subject test. But Attorney General Bob Butterworth and several public-interest law groups convinced the court that it did not do so.

Butterworth argued, and the court agreed, that the Connerly plan violates the single-subject rule because it applies to cities and counties as well as the state, and that it applies not only to race but also to sex, color, ethnicity and national origin.

In a separate opinion, Justice Leander Shaw agreed with the result of the lead opinion but differed somewhat in the reasoning. Shaw said "the ballot titles and summaries are fundamentally misleading" in implying that the amendments' main effect would be to protect Floridians from the deprivation of rights.

"Rather than frankly notifying voters that the proposed amendments would be used as a sword to stop state and local governments from promoting citizens' rights, the amendments fly under false colors and give voters the illusory impression that they would be used as a shield to bar government from repressing citizens' rights," Shaw wrote.

Thursday's ruling, delivered by the court as it heads into a summer recess, came a day after an administrative law judge endorsed Gov. Jeb Bush's Talented 20 plan, a key element of the governor's One Florida initiative to end affirmative action in university admissions, state contracting and hiring.

In pushing for public support and legislative approval of One Florida, Bush had argued that he wanted to delve into affirmative action in a gentler, less-divisive, and slower-going approach than what would be done under Connerly's amendments.

On Thursday, Bush told reporters that he did not support and would not personally have voted for the amendments, and he praised the court decision as "good news for our incredibly diverse state."

"Mr. Connerly's ballot initiative would have been unnecessarily divisive for Florida," Bush said. "The One Florida initiative is the right thing to do because it promotes diversity in ways that are fair to all."